Former financier of the founder of Georgia's ruling party Bidzina Ivanishvili, former head of the Co-Investment Fund, Giorgi Bachiashvili, said that he was brutally beaten in prison on July 11. This information was confirmed to the Georgian service of Radio Liberty by the prisoner's lawyer, David Jandieri.
"Giorgi is alone in the cell. It is under video surveillance. A man entered his cell, who behaved aggressively from the very beginning. He began to fight and beat him," Jandieri shared.
The former financier explains his beating as an attempt to intimidate him with the aim of forcibly confiscating his property. He believes that the incident is the result of coordinated actions by the prison administration and criminals, "consequently constituting a single criminal group."
"I declare that no matter how many criminals are sent to my cell and whoever is doing the violence, I will not be broken and will not give in to intimidation," the businessman was quoted as saying by the opposition television channel Formula TV.
Bachiashvili also said that on July 8, the prison warden summoned him and urged him to disclose bank account details and cryptocurrency wallets to oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili. In response to his refusal, the former financier heard: "Giorgi, you are not in a position to set conditions. You know that there are different people in prison - both "crazy" and less "crazy"." Soon after, Bachiashvili was brutally beaten.
According to him, he managed to get a call from a lawyer only after he went on a hunger strike.
Bachiashvili's trial began in 2023, when the founder of the ruling Georgian Dream party accused him of stealing almost $40 million in cryptocurrency. The defendant was banned from leaving the country, and the bail amounted to 2.5 million lari. It is noteworthy that for a long time, the financier was considered one of Ivanishvili's closest associates.
In early March 2025, it became known that Bachiashvili had managed to secretly leave Georgia, and on March 10, he was sentenced in absentia to 11 years in prison and put on the wanted list.
On May 1, the court ordered Bachiashvili to pay Bidzina Ivanishvili about 9,000 bitcoins, which is equivalent to more than $850 million today.
At the end of May, it became known that the fugitive had been detained. On May 29, at a court hearing, he shared the details of his return to the country. According to Bachiashvili, he was kidnapped from abroad, “kept blindfolded for two days, then loaded onto an Airzena plane and brought back to Georgia.” The defendant’s lawyers said he could be tortured in his home country.
